Hospitals in Latin America and the Caribbean

Health service provided by public or private institutions at the primary and hospital referral levels should be coordinated so that the available resources are distributed equitably to meet the needs and aspirations of the population. The challenge is to improve the quality of hospital care and the existing pattern of public and private services in Latin America and the Caribbean.(AU)

An overview of health-related industrial biotechnology in Latin American and the Caribbean

There is some uncertainty about the extent to which Latin America and the Caribbean have participated in the advances of health-related industrial biotechnology. This article reviews the available literature and seeks to provide an overview of the prevailing situation. In general, national governments and multinational agencies have provided most of the health-related biotechnology investments within this region. Efforts to achieve technology transfers, a subject of prime concern, have been developed by a number of programs including the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, the UNDP/UNESCO/UNIDO Regional Biotechnology Program for Latin America and the Caribbean; PAHO's Program for the Regional Development of Biotechnology as Applied to Health; the PAHO/WHO Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI); and PAHO's Regional System of Vaccines (SIREVA). Regarding current production capacity, some successful efforts have been made to produce a variety of therapeutic products including recombinant and natural ionterferons, interleukins, insulin, and recombinant streptokinase; but in general the region's current potential in this area is at best incipient and uncertain. However, the region does have a limited ability to make diagnostic products and a well-established capacity for vaccine development. Overall, this picture suggests that the region has the potential to play a small but significant role in health-related biotechnology (AU).

Research in Jamaica with particular reference to nutrition

The argument is developed that, because the problems faced in the Third World are different from those of the technologically advanced countries, the problems of the Third World are not being addressed in sufficient impact. The blind transfer of skills and techniques and training curricula exacerbates rather than helps us to face the unsolved questions that cripple much of the Third World. The way forward is to establish and strengthen existing centres of indigenous science and to bring them to a level of sophistication that is comparable with those in technologically developed societies. The principles involed are illustrated by considering human nutrition. The problems are of staggering proportions, with about one third of the world's children chronically undernutritioned. The resultant stunting of mental and physical development in such a large proportion of the world's children, and the adults into which they mature, is clearly an important problem. And yet, the extant expertise to tackle these problems at the most fundamental levels is very limited. It is an absolute truth that you cannot apply what you do not know! The most exclusive encouragement of "applied" or "health services" research, posited upon animal work in First World institutions is clearly unbalanced. I have tried to start to answer why Third World science is a cinderella in this paper: the reasons are clearly both very complex and not understood by those who try to help the Third World from abroad or by those who control the resources with the Third World. (AU)